Time to give Trump Presidency it's own Thread.Follow

I think the most likely case is that technology simply was exponentially better this election season than it was in 2012..and 2008.. etc.. and we are only going to see such things increase as tech increases... The particular opponents are incidental..

Hilary losing is the democrats failures.. not a Russian win... if we recall the cry was anti-establishment.. so the MORE we see this man pissing off both side the more his support will grow.

I think Russia's goal was simply chaos.. (at which they have clearly succeeded) .

However, any technology will be available to the domestic forces which want to influence the election as well. Not only do domestic spenders seem willing to vastly outspend foreign players, they have the advantage of understanding how to influence the culture better.

Perhaps it was just my impression for looking through their attempts on reddit, for example, but a lot of Russia attempts to instigate seemed pretty off base. A lot of trying to fuel interracial strife, or distrust of police forces,
etc. A lot of things that would probably be effective in other parts of the world, or even in ours if they knew how to fan the flames better. There's a couple of accounts that seemed to be able to do it effectively, but most fell flat, and fell flat a lot. Russia wasn't the ones screaming "nasty woman" or "idiot" at the top of their lungs at the beginning of November 2016, that was almost solely domestically funded money. Other than a few bright spots across reddit, twitter, facbook, etc. it seems their efforts were mostly ineffective.

I'd imagine they'll get better at this in the future, but so will we. We're quite good at hating each other without Russian efforts, and I'm simply left wondering if focusing the blame on Russia is an effective way to draw attention elsewhere and allow the domestic dialog to remain poor.



Edited, Jul 19th 2018 10:23am by someproteinguy

Edited, Jul 19th 2018 10:24am by someproteinguy

Okay, well which pieces of Russia propaganda do you think were particularly effective at swaying public opinion?

Well how would you propose we measure the effectiveness of the propaganda then?

Okay, to be fair this wasn't even part of the conversation I was having with Kelvyquayo. We were talking about Spoileror at least my impression was we were talking about the effects of the propaganda efforts, to which I replied the Russian propaganda I saw didn't seem to be very effective. Nowhere was I talking about the Russian hacking, and I'm not aware of how severe the fallout from the hacks were, as a lot of that doesn't seem to have been made public yet? Spoiler(or I'm simply failing to recall details at least...)

Edited, Jul 19th 2018 10:49am by someproteinguy

Well, it's certainly part of the "Trump was elected at least partially on the back of Russian efforts" that you were downplaying by citing Russian spending and your claim that Russian interference had a trivial effect.

I mean, those twelve indictments weren't for making Facebook posts, they were hacking into the DNC and US elections systems. Trying to make the topic "how effective was this tweet versus that tweet?" misses the entire point.

Edited, Jul 19th 2018 12:56pm by Jophiel

Do you think the DNC hacking played a significant role in the election?

I honestly don't know.

On one hand you have the NSA chief going on record saying it didn't, and I'd assume he'd know more than myself about the matter (given he's one of the few people who would have access to the full details). On the other hand, I don't think you could completely discount it as a factor, as more details have continued to emerge since his statements were made. I don't recall ever seeing a good breakdown of what was stolen, or how they suspect that information was used. I also imagine a lot of that analysis will remain classified until the 2016 election is nothing but a historical curiosity.

As far as fallout from it, it certainly didn't look good for Hillary at the time, but I don't know how much that really moved the stick (i.e. how many people changed their votes because of it). She was already a really well known commodity, and people had a lot of reasons to like or dislike her already. It seemed to be more of DNC problem than a Hillary problem (unlike the earlier issue with her personal e-mail server) so I'd imagine that diffused the blame a bit.

Edit: that 538 article I'd imagine probably sums it up as well as any of us probably could.



For what it's worth, it wasn't near the top of the list of things that made me like or dislike her or Trump more.

Edited, Jul 19th 2018 11:40am by someproteinguy

I thought the big "Sanders was Robbed' stuff didn't come out after the election when they were talking about how the DNC was being funded by Hillary-Money to use foreigners to dig up dirt on Trump?

Edited, Jul 19th 2018 4:29pm by TirithRR

Pretty sure it was after the Democrat Primary... and I don't know why it's being put like Sanders WASN'T robbed.. I'd be pretty pissed.. But Hilary supporters are going to downplay that underhandedness.. just like Trump supporters think he's the white messiah... it's irrelevant now anyway... except to know that people will so easily turn the cheek at such behavior... but I doubt it's production to weigh those tactics to Trump's antics during the GOP primary... Anyone versed in history should know how bad things could actually get when it comes to elections.


Is there any evidence for/against Russians(trying?) hacking GOP servers at all? Were not Russians also trolling against Trump?
Again.. I think it was more spreading general chaos.. and maybe what they had on Hilary was simply a lot better catalyst for general chaos than what was already out in the open for Trump.. Just seems logical to me.
Not to mention it's certainly not far-fetched to think that Hilary herself was the wrong choice, period. Sorry.

I don't have high expectations for Trump (and never did.. so I can't be outraged at this).. but I don't think anyone in the general public has enough information to make an informed decision in either direction.. except where their decisions are informed by their emotions.

Given that Obama was president when Russian was "trying to interfere with our election(s)" (present tense) and did do exactly that, I'm not sure what the issue is here.

What happened is that Trump won the election, the Left went nuts, and grasped onto that as the reason, and have built it up into this massive thing. Continuing to obsess over it to the exclusion of the fact that we kinda do have to also govern, and that means working with other nations (including Russia).



That's one interpretation. Again though, what do you think should be happening here? The Russian's didn't do anything more in 2016 than in previous election cycles. The only difference is that this time the Left decided to make it a "big deal". That's literally it. Absent evidence (any evidence) of some kind of collusion/payback/whatever between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts during the election cycle (which to this day there is still zero), we just have the Russians doing the same thing they always do, and which they are not alone in doing either.

Why the focus on how Trump must behave differently than other past presidents towards Russia because of this?



You do realize that constantly badgering him to "condemn Russia and Putin for meddling" is entirely about creating this very thing, right? If he does it, then he's admitting that his presidency is the result of Russian meddling and is therefore delegitimized. If he does not, it plays into the narrative that he's somehow secretly on Putin's side, in his pocket, etc.



And that's exactly the angle the narrative is designed to create. What's funny about this is you're ignoring the very same intelligence sources that you earlier bashed Trump for failing to agree with. The same exact source that determined there was Russian meddling in the election also determined that it wasn't sufficient to have influenced the outcome of the election. Yet, you're gleefully latching on to one half of their determinations, while ignoring the other.

And that's not even half though. The same intelligence report also wrote at length about how long Russia has been doing this, and in how many different ways, and in "support" of which party. I use that term very loosely since I don't think Russia supports either party, but is more about casting fear and uncertainty into the process.

The greatest harm done to us as a result of this wasn't the Russian meddling, but the reaction from the Left. Cause they fell for it.



Putin isn't "taking advantage" of anything. You keep saying stuff like this, as though Putin got something here. What did he get? Nothing. You're putting an enormous amount of weight on stuff that doesn't actually matter at all. Putin "gaining stuff" is things like annexing Crimea and having the US stand by and do nothing. Getting the US to drop its efforts to put missile defense in Eastern Europe (possibly setting up the aforementioned annexation). Getting the US to hand over management of the Syrian conflict (and its chemical weapons) to Russia. These are all tangible gains. And you and I both know which president was in office when they happened.

What Trump is trying to do here is even have the ability to enact any policy at all with regard to Russia without everyone in the peanut gallery interpreting it in the context of "Russian Meddling". Putin doesn't have to do anything. The Left and the US media are doing all the heavy lifting for him.

If you look objectively at the actual actions the US has taken towards Russia since Trump took office, and set aside your perceptions of "Russian Meddling", you'd conclude that Trump has been much more forceful with Russia than Obama was. Am I the only person who remembers when Romney named Russia as one of our biggest national security threats and Obama laughed about it? I seem to recall some of the members of this forum, in some cases the very same ones today going nuts about Russian Meddling, joining in mocking Romney and Republicans over this back then.

You guys are nothing if not slaves to the media narrative. And with very short memories to boot.

Edited, Jul 19th 2018 7:10pm by gbaji

Apparently yes. So either there was nothing terribly damaging in what they got, or (insert conspiratorial tone) they chose not to release it so as to help the GOP. Which seems odd. Why bother in the first place? Or, more likely the Russians hack the same way most sophisticated organizations do. They cast a wide net, hack a ton of stuff using bots and worms and viruses, and then pick and chose out of what shows up in the net in terms of what they do with it.



Every indication is that the Russians believed (as did most people) that Clinton was going to win the election. They were doing what they did, not to try to help Trump win the election, but to damage Clinton's presidency. They had a twitter campaign in place condemning Clinton for "stealing the election" (presumably tied into the previous narrative created by the wikileaks of the DNC emails related to the "stealing of the primary" from Sanders), complete with false "news" claiming reports of election fraud, tampering with voting machines, disenfranchising of Trump voters, etc.

And then Trump won. And the irony is that everything after that point suddenly shifted in the opposite direction. It's pretty obvious to anyone not drinking the koolaid that the Russians don't care who we think cheated to win, as long as we think that. I really do think, however, that the biggest difference is that, had Clinton won, the claims of cheating/stealing/whatever would have remained relegated to the back alleys of the internet and questionable "news sources" and more or less ignored by the mainstream media (and rightly so). Since it went the other way though, those same media sources seem more than willing to jump right onto the "Russian Meddling" bandwagon.

Which leads us to where we are today. Sorry. I think the whole thing is overblown BS.



Yeah. Pretty much agree. I didn't (and don't) have high expectations of Trump either. But I'm also not going to go overboard with the bizarre criticisms and claims either. I'm not happy with some of the messaging he uses (but that's not like it's new, so whatever). But when we get to actual policy decisions and actions he's taken, I've actually been happily surprised to find that they've been pretty decent.

Certainly it has not been a disaster. Despite the best efforts by some to portray it as such.

To give the appearance of an "equal" attack on both sides?
From the very link you posted:



PRIOR to the election. If you want to wish away that this was in NO WAY designed to push the vote toward Trump, you are welcome to do so. No different than a million other things this administration has done that you're just fine with (like jailing 3 year olds).

You mean like remembering how you told us all how corrupt 45 was and that you'd never support him because your principles were too important to you?